View full sizeFairhope Education Advisory Committee member Jim Kellen speak to the Fairhope City Council on Monday, Feb. 25, 2013. The council voted unanimously to support the allocation of $350,000 to the city's five public schools. (Marc D. Anderson/manderson@al.com)

FAIRHOPE, Alabama -- The five public schools in the city received a $350,000 boost Monday night as the council voiced its support for the Education Advisory Committee’s recommendation on how to split the municipal funds.

Each school -- Fairhope High, Fairhope Middle, Fairhope Intermediate, Fairhope Elementary and J. Larry Newton -- submitted plans to the committee on how they would use their $70,000 in allotted funds.

Council members approved the funding “in principle” and Mayor Tim Kant, who was in Montgomery, will be tasked with writing up a resolution and a contract between the city and the Baldwin County Board of Education to be approved by the council.

Despite the approval, there were concerns that the schools may be penalized for receiving the city funding.

“Giving the money is a fine objective but one of the things I’m a little worried about is making sure that this doesn’t affect any of the money coming from the Baldwin County school board in the future or anything else,” Councilman Kevin Boone said. “I don’t see that. I hate to know that we donated the money and then next year they say don’t worry about it we’ll take ($350,000) out of Fairhope’s side because their city will support them. I don’t want to get involved with that.”

Committee member Jim Kellen said they didn’t have it in writing but that Superintendent Alan Lee assured them that Fairhope schools would not be penalized because of the city’s effort.

The council and committee concurred that the agreement needs to be in writing.

“We want to be proactive partners with you, the schools, and the county board of education,” said Gretchen Schapker, co-chair of the advisory committee. “This is a baby step. This is the first step. And as a committee, I think I can speak for the committee that we are excited about working with our school system to make our school system one of the finest in the world.”

The advisory committee was formed a year ago with the appointment on five highly regarded retired educators and they were tasked with recommending improvements for the public schools within the municipality. They came back to the council with a recommendation of using $750,000 to add 2 teachers to each school. When the new council took office, however, it was agreed that the city could only afford $350,000. Soon after the committee got to work, with Councilwoman Diana Brewer serving as a liaison, and informed each principal to come up with proposals on how the money would be used.

The principals were told the funds could be used for digital technology with teachers playing a key role in determining needs and all schools had to have a common theme to ensure continuity of education across all grade levels.

A common focus was deemed to be LEADS (Literacy, Engineering, Arts, Design and Science).

Fairhope Elementary

For Fairhope Elementary its plan is to help add an additional desktop computer to each second- and third-grade class and to add 3 iPads to each of the school’s 47 classrooms. The school will use an additional $15,000 from its local funds to help purchase all the necessary hardware. The boost in computers and iPads will reduce a current 24 to 1, student-to-technology ratio to a 5-to-1 level.

Fairhope Intermediate

At Fairhope Intermediate the school will use its $70,000 in funding to purchase 45 Apple MacBook Air laptop computers for each teacher and it would invest in a number of project-based learning kits based on robotics, science/literacy experiments, chemical changes, models of matter, planets and moons, math, and GPS caching to explore mapping and tracking technology.

Fairhope Middle

Fairhope Middle will purchase 17 MacBook Airs for math, sciences and technology teachers to use with Promethean smartboards in each classroom. The money will also go toward the purchase of new software for students to better interact with smartboards and to buy 11 ActivBoard 500 Pros, state-of-the-art whiteboards, that replace older Promethean boards.

J. Larry Newton

With a student-to-computer ratio of roughly 28 to 1, J. Larry Newton School will purchase 20 MacBook Airs, 40 iPads and software. In its proposal, school officials said the boost in technology would “help support students across 7 grade levels, K-6 and would be used for many years.”

Fairhope High

At the high school, it adopted the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) concept and will use the city funding to enhance that initiative. Farhope HIgh will upgrade equipment in the engineering department, Eight Promethean smartboards and projectors will be installed in the math classes, a portable STEM lab will serve all math and science classes, and the school will begin offering a biotechnology course for the first time ever in a Baldwin County public school in the fall with an in-house teacher, according to the mission statement.

Supports independent system?

During Monday’s meeting, Councilman Mike Ford asked whether the financial support by the council could be considered by Superintendent Lee as a push toward an independent system, which has been broached in the past but had been dropped after a lack of support.

Henry Clark, chairman of the committee, said the panel was formed last year with specific instructions not to pursue a breakaway but to enhance education at the schools. Clark also said a liaison for the county school board, Stephanie Harrison, was appointed and has attended most meetings and keeps Lee informed.

“She’s told us that he’s very supportive of our community,” Clark said. “What it does, and I can tell you from being a former administration in K through 12, is that if we improve the 5 schools in our feeder pattern that just gives other communities the incentive to improve their schools. So it’s going to make the whole system look better.”

Brewer said that she and Council President Jack Burrell met with Lee on Friday. “He was very encouraging and said his hope is that the other communities in Baldwin County will follow suit and do something similar,” she said.

After the vote Brewer, a former executive director for the Fairhope Educational Enrichment Foundation, thanked the council for its support of education.

Brewer said having the city play a greater role in the schools has been “near and dear” to her heart for many year.

“It’s something I’ve worked on for a long time and I’m just really proud that we are finally taking that step forward,” she said. “It’s a good thing.”